Meeting with Dominika Buczak

The meeting with Dominika Buczak will take place on Thursday, March 5 at 5:30 p.m. at the Wolność Library. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Marta Sikorska from the Institute of History at the University of Łódź.

About the book “Parasolki”:

The pages of this book interweave the stories of the first emancipation activists—both fictional and real figures—such as Narcyza Żmichowska, a very young Zofia Nałkowska, and legendary activists including Kazimiera Bujwidowa, Aleksandra Szczerbińska (later Piłsudski’s wife), and Wanda Gertz, who, against the law, disguised herself as a boy and became Kazik Żuchowicz in order to fight in the Polish Legions. The book also features the renowned physician Anna Tomaszewicz-Dobrska, who was the first in Poland to perform a successful Caesarean section resulting in the survival of both mother and child.

The lives of the protagonists reflect, like a kaleidoscope, all the key social issues that remain relevant today: the struggle for equal treatment, the right to self-determination, and freedom of choice. At the same time, it is a story about the extreme poverty and social injustice of the early 20th century, which affected women and children the most.

“Parasolki” is an important and necessary book—one that had to be written—because it does not only tell the history of the women’s movement. Its heroine is you, and every other woman who today wants to say: I am here!

 

Marta Sikorska, Professor at the University of Łódź, works at the Department of 19th-Century Polish History at the University of Łódź.

Her research interests include women’s history, the history of Polish socialism, and the history of Łódź. She is the author of articles, monographs, and source publications, including:

• Zygmunt Heryng (1854–1931). A Biography of a Left-Wing Intellectual, Łódź 2011;
• “Freedom or Crime?” The Revolution of 1905–1907 in the Newspaper “Rozwój”, ed. M. Sikorska-Kowalska, Łódź 2012;
• “What Does the Modern Woman Want?” Women’s Issues in the Polish Press in Łódź at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. M. Sikorska-Kowalska, Łódź 2013;
• Historians and Socialism. The Polish Independence Left under the Sign of Clio. Selected Texts, ed. J. Kolbuszewska, M. Sikorska-Kowalska, Łódź 2014;
• J. Hłasko, Memoirs, ed. M. Sikorska-Kowalska, Łódź 2016;
• Workers of Łódź in the Second Half of the 19th Century. New Research Directions, ed. K. Śmiechowski, M. Sikorska-Kowalska, K. Fukumoto, Łódź 2016.